Shane Prigmore, whose character design talents have graced Coraline and How to Train Your Dragon, has illustrated his first book Spaceheadz
Here’s a trailer for the book, the first in a series, that explains the concept:
Rotoscoped animation based on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory doesn’t sound like a particularly good recipe for entertainment, but French animator Nunub (aka Micaël Reynaud) has created a worthy experimental piece using those elements combined with a piece of music by Turkish rock pioneer Fikret Kızılok. In his video description, Nunub says that he doesn’t particularly care for the subject matter; it was only an excuse to animate something. While he doesn’t push the abstraction as far as something like Robert Breer’s A Man and His Dog Out for Air, it’s a lot of fun watching how the subject matter becomes progressively more abstract and painterly. Try freeze-framing it for some unexpected imagery.
The live charity auction aiding animation veteran Pres Romanillos in his fight against leukemia will take place this Sunday. The event takes places at the Animation Guild (1105 N. Hollywood Way Burbank, CA 91505) with registration beginning at 1pm and bidding at 2pm. Over 160 items will be available, including the pieces pictured in this post. For more information, including absentee bidding info, visit Pres-Aid.com.
UPDATE: Pres Romanillos passed away on July 17, 2010 from leukemia. More information can be found here.
Here’s a funky CG kids’ show pilot from Buenos Aires, Argentina called Glüko & Lennon. Created by Federico Radero and Tomi Dieguez at L’Orange Gutan, the show contains a generous dose of the rainbow-colored vector-oriented design sensibility that can be found in spades at any Pictoplasma conference. They make the look work well, though I can’t imagine any US broadcasters would be hip enough to allow a show like this on the air.
For more about the show, visit GlukoAndLennon.blogspot.com.
(Thanks, David OReilly)
Brooklyn-based animator and bona fide biker chick Lori Samsel made this cute animated piece entirely out of Japanese rice crackers. I think I’m most impressed that she managed to animate the film before eating all of the crackers. Those things are yummy!
Bob “BobServo” Mackey, who parodied Cartoon Brew three years ago, is at it again. His latest comical stab at the Brew includes post titles like “50 Years of Turkmenistanimation” and “Cartoon Network? More Like FARToon NOTwork.” He sounds like a good candidate if we ever need a third Brewer! Check out Bob’s new Cartoon Brew parody at SomethingAwful.com.
(Thanks, Connor Sims)
Blockhead’s “The Music Scene” by Anthony Francisco Schepperd will be one of the finest animated music videos you’ll see this year. You can’t fake this kind of animation–Schepperd is an animator’s animator whose drawings breathe and pulsate with energy surging from one subject matter to another. His surrealistic morphing visuals are rooted in solid drawing and his rough animation style complements his seemingly stream-of-conscious flow of visual ideas. The pencil mileage that went into making this is mind-boggling; the only credit on the Vimeo page is Schepperd, and if he animated the entire thing himself, all I can say is wow! Along with last year’s video for Ape School’s “Wail to God”, Schepperd has proven himself to be one of the most exciting traditional animators on the scene right now. Find out more about his work at TheManimator.com.
Something Left, Something Taken is a charming and funny tale about paranoia in the Bay Area. It’s made by the Brooklyn-based husband-and-wife team of Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata, who are better known as Tiny Inventions. They worked on the film for nearly two-and-a-half years in between commercial jobs like this “Davy Crockett” music video for They Might Be Giants.
Max and Ru used nearly every trick in the bag to make this including stop-motion, pixilation, drawn animation on paper, After Effects, Flash and live-action puppets. The film mixes together these elements in a seamless manner to create a whimsical hand-crafted world featuring lots of felt, fabric, rope, and cardboard. My favorite touch is the crocheted eyelids of the characters.
A comprehensive “making of” blog post with videos and images is available on their website.
CREDITS
Direction/Animation/Design/Writing:
Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata
Sound Design/ Mix: Greg Sextro (East West Audio)
Voice recording: Erin Kilkenny
Music:
Erin Kilkenny
Andrew Landry
Andy Kennedy
Panic Bomber
Alex & Alison
Peter Squires
Voice:
Ru Kuwahata as Ru
Max Porter as Max
Kyle McKeveny as Artie the driver
Mickey Ryan as Dr. Janno
Tatiana Gomberg as Leslie
Erin Kilkenny as Scientist
Mike DiBenedetto as Steward
Veronica Taylor as Extra
Marc Diraison as Extra
Friends who helped us:
Sean Mcbride for rigging characters
Will Krause for prop making
Jene Wallace for prop making
Mary Bakija for sewing
Susie Porter for knitting
Noella Borie for interning
Sara Maysles for voice recording
Animation artist Lou Romano (The Incredibles, Up) makes a strong case for using illustrations on magazine covers with this attractive cover for Written By magazine in honor of Ray Bradbury’s ninetieth birthday. Better still, there’s an artwork-heavy post on Lou’s blog documenting the creative process for this illustration.
It was recently brought to my attention that we’ve never posted Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Brew. We will right that wrong today. The artwork is funny, and the cartoon is clever and entertaining–things which can’t often be said of mainstream animation. Peter Browngardt made it for Cartoon Network’s Cartoonstitute program; he’s currently working on his own CN series Secret Mountain Fort Awesome.
(Thanks, Cory)
Happy birthday to Michael Barrier who is celebrating his 70th today. Many Brew readers are already familiar with his achievements, but for those who aren’t, Michael Barrier is a historian of the finest kind and a true champion of our art form.
Barrier began interviewing animation artists in the late-1960s, and by the 1980s, he (along with his Los Angeles-based research partner Milt Gray) had recorded the most comprehensive collection of interviews with artists from the Golden Age of theatrical animation. To put his work into perspective, when he started chronicling the lives of these artists, few film critics took animation seriously, and even fewer regarded the classic Hollywood cartoons as a field worthy of study. In the face of such indifference, Michael had the audacity to not only interview the famous directors but hundreds of little known artists who contributed to the success of Hollywood theatrical cartoons ranging from animators and layout artists to cameramen and composers.
The research and interviews appeared in his seminal journal Funnyworld which was published during the 1970s. It was before my time, but I’ve heard the stories. As the first American publication to write about animation thoughtfully and critically, every issue was eagerly anticipated by artists, researchers, and fans, and its contributors included some of the leading researchers of the day including John Canemaker, Joe Adamson, Mark Kausler, and Bill Blackbeard. It remains to this day the gold standard for magazines about Hollywood animation.
Barrier has also written a number of books about comic art and animation. Most notably in 1999 he published his impeccably researched and feistily opinionated history of animation Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age
It’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be doing what I do today if not for the trailblazing work of Michael Barrier. Our collective understanding of the animation art form is richer and more nuanced because of his tireless efforts, and this is a fine occasion to acknowledge his contributions to the field of animation.
Keep up to date with his latest projects at MichaelBarrier.com.
Tonight at 7pm, ASIFA-East and Women in Animation present a screening of the films of Frank and Caroline Mouris. The couple is best known for their Oscar-winning short Frank Film, which still looks fresh and current nearly forty years after it was made. The screening takes place at the School of Visual Arts (209 E. 23rd St. between 2nd/3rd Ave) in room 502 on the 5th floor. It’s FREE so you’ve got no excuse to miss this one.
The President of the Universe by Queens, NY-based animator Mike Carlo was one of the shorts that premiered last week at the Midsummer Night Toons event. The humor won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but there’s some nice cartoony artwork throughout, and animated in Flash no less.
CREDITS
Directed and animated by Mike Carlo
Color and edit: Al Pardo
Sound Design and musical score: Joey Spallina
Music producer: Christina Tortorelli
Voices: Mike Carlo, Christina Tortorelli
Sound recorded at Tonefarmer
(Thanks to Celia for the link)
Pre-production art from The Last Fiction
It’s been a while since I’ve written about animation produced in Iran–specifically, April 2004 when I interviewed director Amir Dehestani–so I was delighted to learn about a young Tehran-based commercial studio Hoorakhsh 7th Sky Studio that is producing work with production values a few notches above other animation I’ve seen from that region’s developing animation scene.
Hoorakhsh, which has been around since 2005, is currently developing its first animated feature The Last Fiction, which is based on Persian mythology. They have nearly finished pre-production and storyboarding the film. A trailer on their website (under the Reels section) gives a hint of the polished anime-influenced style they’re working towards. According to an email a friend of mine received, the studio is looking for international co-production partners because they feel “that both the story and the visual style of this project has the potential of being developed and published internationally in order to be shown to the audiences of different cultures.”
This Friday, June 18, NY indie Pat Smith will be presenting a screening of his short films including the world premiere of his latest film Masks. Also on the program: a behind-the-scenes mini-doc directed by Lizz Lyons. Pat, Lizz, and Karl von Kries, the composer of Masks, will be available for a Q&A session after the show. The screening begins at 8pm at the 92Y in Tribeca (200 Hudson St.). Tickets, which are $12, can be purchased ahead of time at the 92Y website. Also be sure to check out Scribble Junkies, the blog that Pat co-authors with Bill Plympton.
